This is a fine game of returning home after dropping out of college and discovering that your home town isn't they way you remembered it. The conversations that Mae has with Gregg and Bea are nicely written (much better than Life is Strange) and the activities that they go on are varied and interesting.

I found myself going to visit every character I could and checking in all the little things. Bouncing around with Mae was quite entertaining and when you aren't allowed to jump and run around like a goof, it changes the mood drastically.

I really wish the controls were different for the bass sections, I can't get a handle on 4 strings on an xbox controller using the ABXY buttons. I have a bad habit of messing up the middle ones.

The dream sequences started of intersting, but I wish they were more different to each other. At a point I was disinterested in going to sleep, which I'm not sure if that was the intention or not.

I wasn't as taken with the mystery, maybe because it kicks in so late or maybe because I just enjoyed the small town stuff so much. Ended up with a Bea ending as I felt like she was a better influence on Mae than Gregg. Still I hung out with both almost equally so not sure if what I did or said during the activities impacted on the ending.

Anyway, good game, recommended.

Played through with my daughter. We took rather too much time as we missed getting one of the items from the vending machine and she insisted that we absolutely did get them all. We had an entire chain worked out, but couldn't do the first part because of that.

She complained that it wasn't as much fun as Spy Fox 1, but I think that's just because she doesn't remember Spy Fox 1 as much. She's now insisting that we replay that one, but I might just let her tackle that one by herself and see how good her inventory puzzle adventure game skills have progressed

I loved Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and Space Ghost Coast to Coast when they were on Cartoon Network. So when I was in the US in 2008 I picked up a copy, which was fine because I had a Free Loader.

Whelp before I got around to playing it there was an update that stopped the Free Loader from working and so I didn't get a chance to play it and I've never seen it available in Australia.

Anyway, after years of beating Phoenix Wright, I felt like it was time to take on the birdman. I finally managed to play it (admittingly through emulation) and yeah, it's good.

It takes Phoenix's gameplay and slaps it into Harvey's world, but all of the scenes are animated and the tone is more akin to Birdman's. There's little tension in the game, only presenting evidence during a trial seems to loose you any crests, which is a good thing too given that much of the fun of the game is from seeing what happens if you say something ridiculous... usually during those parts you can select another option until you get the correct one (and so the challenge is identifying the right response and picking that one last).

There are sections of the game where I had to visit each place to try and find where the next cut scene was and two times where it was a case of present everything in every room to figure out what was required (though once I felt dumb not realising what it wanted).

The story's are mmm..... like the show and there are good jokes in there.

But it's probably not worth rushing out to get.

Haven't really played Minecraft, so can't really compare to that, but I enjoyed the story mode, while some of the villagers can be annoying, helping them with their problems and growing the towns was entertaining.

The boss battles were... less than stellar. From a storyline point of view, the game deals with what does it mean to be a hero and should fate always direct your life or can you build a different future to the one that has been laid out for you.

I didn't do most of the challenges (bit cruel not indicating what they are during the worlds) and I'm not sure that I'll be in a hurry to try and do them.

It'd be nice if the freeplay mode didn't have the need to eat, it might be good for the daughter. I'll probably play it just to try and build a lovely town, but not sure how much of it I'll end up playing.

Started playing this before the pandemic in Feb where holding hands and having people come around unexpectedly was a great thing.

And finished it as we were going into our second lockdown and it felt a little weird and strange. Though maybe it gives some hope that after any crisis people can still find each other and bring out the best in each other.

There's not much gameplay here and like Katamari it's mostly about the joy and humour of objects.

In this one you start of as a cube (who has a top hat) and you do things in order to bring more living objects back. Each object that comes back is presented with a fanfare and a "Welcome back ". You can switch between objects as some objects have special abilities.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's very laid back.

The game presents you with a final decision at the end and it's possibly the most thoughtful decision I've seen in a game in a while (which is odd, given the laid back and playful nature of the rest of the game).

I'm not sure how much of a difference the decision makes, but it's still nice that it was there.

If you were to describe what The Artful Escape was to it's basic units, you'd say it's a Simon Says broken up by basic forgiving platforming and dialogue choices that have no impact to the gameplay.

But... this is a game where style trumps substance. The story is about finding ones true self and moving out from under the shadow of a relative and what your expected to be. And it looks and sounds cool while doing it.

Could you get the same experience watching a Let's Play of this game... maybe? But you get to personalise your character at a points in the game and it's certainly fun to do that and be telling your story rather than someone elses. Plus it's very cool to do a running double jump off a ciff and boost with a chord and land on a slope while shredding. In the end your just holding the X button while you run a lot, but it's just very cool.

It doesn't overstay it's welcome and the Simon Says portions don't require you to remember (as you can do them at the same time as they're presented if you wish). And it's on Game Pass, so....

The Touryst is a 3d blocky puzzle platformer that really doesn't have too much platforming.

The game is padded out a fair bit with what would normally be side quests, little mini games and fetch quests. Which is fine, though you're required to do a certain percentage to complete the see and see the credits.

But it's got a nice atmosphere and does have a very summery feel (which is nice given that I'm in wintery cold Melbourne).

Some of the mini games though are a pain, while others are a nice distraction.

The temples tend to be interesting, implementing different mechanics. Some of the temples require you to do platforming to platforms over inky black depths, which makes life a little too tricky as it's hard to get a sense of depth.

The games not punitive though, any death just restarts you from the start of the room, but it can be frustrating all the same.

This game has a simple premise (you're a thing with legs and feet and no arms) but it finds interesting things to do with it.

The plot is funny and the characters are pretty goofy. In this way I feel like it's like the charming Wandersong, but with different ways of interacting with the world and less puzzles.

I'd recommend this one, but be aware it's a quicky.

Played on Android
Yeah, I didn't like this. At all. Everything is just gross. Even at an hour it felt too long. More visual novel than adventure as you don't really have agency.

And I thought maybe the ending could save it, but instead it was a let down.

I don't know if it's specific to the mobile editions, but to move you need to drag the character and to look/interact, you need to press on the thing while facing it. And it's not a great system. At times it got quite infuriating.

The full screen artwork is nice when it's there though.. but they are clipped to fit onto a phone, so some don't even show what they intend to, like the last one.

And it would have been nice if there were details of the suicide prevention phone numbers around the world at the end.

Use potions that equal the value of a group of monsters that you select to stop them from destroying the castle.

Played this one during the school holidays with the kiddo. The game adds different elements in each of the worlds to keep the game interesting while ramping the difficulty.

While the hardest levels aren't all that challenging for an adult, adding a self imposed time limit for each turn to try to do it as fast as you can certainly makes it a little more interesting.

The kid bailed a few worlds in. I suspect she'd worked out that I had tricked her into doing maths. And but came back near the end to see how I was going without her and she helped out a bit.

Murder by Numbers attempts to solve the mystery of what happens if you mix Phoenix Wright with Picross.

And yeah. It's a little rough. There's something very relaxing about Picross, at least for me. It's a thing that I do when I don't want to do a thing. And combining that with a visual novel is a little odd. It feels like you're going through a story and you get this roadblock that you have to go around before you continue, but it's a thing you do to chill... it causes a weird feeling. Like I need to do this thing that I do to relax as quickly as possible to get onto content.

There's this robot who found itself discarded in the dump with no memory. And there's this actress who plays a detective who runs into a robot who needs help. The actress loses her job on the same day her boss is killed and is obviously a suspect, so goes about solving the who dunit with the help of the robot. They then goes on to solve a bunch of others and try to help the robot get it's memory back.

It takes the form of self contained mysteries which culminate in a larger mystery that threads them together somewhat. Some of the murders are fairly straight forward where the shiftiest person did it, others less so.

Maybe I've been spoilt by Picross. The controls on this one was a bit clunky and often the puzzles wouldn't resolve into something that I could identify even when they were coloured in. And I ended up with a correct, but unintended solution which I'm not sure has happened in any of the Picross games I've played (though has happened in other nonagram games).

Most of the puzzles are fairly easy to play without assistance, though one puzzle I wimped out and used assistance. If you complete all the puzzles in a chapter without assistance you get an extra memory that you can view. Sadly, you can't go back and do individual puzzles without playing through the entire chapter again, which is a shame.

I really feel like I should have loved this game, but as it is, it's OK.

When this originally came out I played as Gooigi in a few levels while my wife played her game of it. So some of the levels were not still fairly familiar during my play through. Near the end of this playthrough she jumped in as Gooigi, which comes in very handy for the final boss battles.

She and I play very differently and in co-op respect whose game is being played. She is very obsessed with making sure she gets every last collectable, while I'm happy to grab a collectable if it's presenting an interesting challenge or it's not going to take too long to get.

So here I fell like the collectables don't really provide much. Cash is only really spent on getting bones (which is an instant revive) and getting locators for Boos and trinkets. As you can only have 5 bones at once, most of the money you collect goes towards getting locators for collectables that don't really do anything.

That said I still ended the game with a B rank, so.

The concept of setting this one in a hotel is interesting, it allows the level design to just go hog wild while still making it feel like one single building. To get to most of the levels you'll use the elevator and you'll need to get the buttons which are usually held by the boss of each level. This makes progress very linear and that can be slightly frustrating.

And the introduction of a few new moves helps out a lot too.

Some of the levels are better than others. If you're like me and not interested in collectables, there's one level where you walk almost completely without having to battle or get around obstacles and enter directly into the boss battle. Which ends and you can then walk back to the elevator (fight a few minor ghosts) and end the level.

Generally I liked the game. I did manage to genuinely scare my wife once. I loaded up the game and the sound on our TV was a little too high and with curfew it's been really quiet at home. Luigi walked out of the elevator and as I do at the start of each level I pressed the D-Pad to get him to let out a "M-M-M-Marioooo". She was unaware that this was something that you could do and it fully freaked her out.

I probably won't play it again though, I do still need to get through the rest of 1 and 2, so probably through my focus there rather than here.

The Darkside Detective is a silly point and click adventure game that is horror themed (but doesn't take the horror all that seriously.

It's very easy and slightly breezy, puzzles are fairly logical and are always clear what you should be doing next (if not how).

Your joined by Officer Dooley (who isn't the brightest) as you solve inventory puzzles. The controls are fairly simple, click on something to interact or drag item from inventory onto thing to use/combine.

Thankfully you never get you inventory overstuffed as generally your character will not pick up things until they're required. This does cause problems in some cases where it spans 20 screens (just one of the bonus cases) as if you're not sure what you need to progress, it means visiting each screen to see what can be picked up but hasn't yet.

The locations are pretty small in most cases (usually about 10 screens).

The game is fairly funny, each case tends to take inspiration from a horror film . There's quite a few breaks in the fourth wall and quite a few nods to other adventure games.

A great light hearted game and a good palate cleanser